A Formica ant suspends a drop of aphid honeydew between her mandibles (which bristle with 7 or more teeth), as she drinks it. 
		Photo courtesy of Alex Wild, copyright, used with permission.WonderQuest:  On the web since 1997...      

Home   Top 10    Newsletter   Answer a question    Site Map   Fast answers 
Solving mysteries
WonderQuest

with April Holladay
New!  WeatherQuesting
 
Google
 
Web www.WonderQuest.com

     
RSS Add to Google

Answers About:  

   Animals
   Humans  
   Astronomy 
   Physics
   Mathematics 
   Evolution/Genetics
   Earth 
   Technology
   Plants
   Airspace 
   Sky
   Art, TV, music...  
   Food 
   Oceans/climate 
   Chemistry
   Computers
   Microcreatures

Special Features:  

   Current Column
   Teachers' corner
   Newsletter
   Answer a question
   Interact with nature

Question for readers to answer:

Can an average person develop the skill to reliably detect liars?

To clarify:  this question is similar to - Can an average person improve at hiding and detecting 'tells' in poker?  Also, consider only deliberate lies intended to harm another and, please, expound on the reasons backing your answer.

Deadline:  June 29, 2009.  We will publish the best answers on  July 13.

You get the credit.

Click here to give me your answer: Answer the question.


Interacting with nature by K:

How to Offer Wild Birds Shelter in the Winter

Not all birds migrate south for the winter.  Winter is a hard season for birds, and many risk freezing to death at night. It doesn't take much effort or money to provide shelter for them, and it can make a huge difference to the little feathered guys!

More Articles >>

 

 

Making black holes in the lab!

A black hole in front of the Large Magellanic cloud, in the next galaxy over.  Artistic interpretation courtesy of Wikipedia.Q: Can scientists create a black hole in a laboratory?  What would it take to create a black hole in a lab?  Teodor, Bucharest, Romania

A black hole in front of the Large Magellanic cloud (the next galaxy over). Artistic interpretation courtesy of Wikipedia.

A:  Recall what a black hole is:  an object squeezed down to the ultimate limit.  Its resulting force of gravity is so strong that nothing escapes the black hole, not even light.  Black holes swallow anything that gets close enough.  A big black hole eats even stars.

May 28, 2008, 2:49 pm. CERN, SWITZERLAND, LHC – Two particles (protons) race around the track in opposite directions, accelerating as they go.  Their speed shoots to nearly that of light — the max.  It's almost certain they'll hit.  Looking good...  They did it!  A head-on collision.  Tremendous impact kinetic energy converts to mass, resulting in a tiny kinetic mass (about 2.5x10 -23 kilograms*), which concentrates in an impossibly small space.  It becomes a black hole!  Just briefly (about 10-27 seconds).  It's gone!  Evaporated, as Stephen Hawking predicted.  But not forgotten.  We have learned much:  Our Universe has at least one more dimension!

Science fiction?  Maybe, but maybe we will create not one but thousands of black holes in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), within a year.  These are exciting times. 

What will it take for this scenario to be true?  Much.  For one thing, our Universe must be different from what we have thought it is.  A different Universe at first seems a crazy notion, but it may really be different. 

Back to that it a moment, but first, why must the Universe be different?  Because in the straight forward view of the Universe where our 3-dimensional space has no hidden dimensions, we can't make a black hole in a lab, and never will. 

Our problem lies with the dual nature of things.  A proton is both a particle and a wave with, unfortunately, a vague position.  Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle says we can't know both a particle's position and momentum accurately.  (One accurately but not both.)

The colliding protons in my hypothetical scenario have a kinetic-energy mass of 10 -23 kilograms.  Since a proton is not just a particle but also a wave, it is smeared out over a distance of about 10-19 meters and, therefore, contained in a tiny volume of about 10 -57 cubic meters.  That mass in such an infinitesimal volume has a big density:  1034 kilograms per cubic meter.

However, the collided protons density, even though enormous, is not dense enough to create a black hole.  The colliding protons must attain the so-called Planck value of 1097 kilograms per cubic meter.  Energies to produce such densities are far beyond any upgrade of the LHC.

OK.  So, we're stuck with a lousy density of 1034 kilograms per cubic meter.  How do we get a black hole out of the LHC?  Easy, we hypothesize another dimension or maybe more. 

Physicists have attacked the current theory of physics, the so called Standard Model, almost since we developed it in the late1960's, because it has flaws.  The Standard Model, based on quantum mechanics, explains much of the Universe, admirably, and Einstein's theory of general relativity explains gravity.  Neither theory, however, probes black holes or the first instant of the big bang.  Neither the standard model nor general relativity defines mass. 

Also, both the Standard Model and general relativity leave us totally in the dark why gravity is so much weaker than all the other forces.  Calling electromagnetism a '1', gives the strong force weighing in at 20, the weak force at 10-7 and gravity at a insignificant 10-36Why so weak?

In the 1990's, physicists developed new theories to answer the weak gravity question.  The theories propose that Space has extra physical dimensions.  Instead of the three dimensions we see around us, the Universe may actually be comprised of another one, two, three... or ten (which superstring theory conjectures) or, possibly, more. 

The theory I like, though, requires only one extra dimension.  With that, we can grow black holes in the lab.

Well, I've run out of room, again.  Another time, I shall continue the story of Space's extra dimensions and making black holes in the lab.

[Please click here to continue the story.]

----

*  A brief note on sizes:  10 -23 is 10 divided by a trillion trillion, a very small number.  1034 is almost a trillion trillion trillion, a very large number.

Further Reading:

Making black holes in the lab, Part 2, WonderQuest

Making black holes in the lab, Part 3, WonderQuest

How black holes trap light, WonderQuest

How black holes die, WonderQuest

Tracking black holes — do they exist?  WonderQuest

Quantum black holes, Scientific American

Fermilab at Work, Fermilab

How do physicists study particles, CERN

The Charm of Strange Quarks: Mysteries and Revolutions of Particle Physics

Comment on the article

(Answered May 28, 2007)

 
Click for a printer-friendly version

Site Map

Question Archive Features Info
Animals Sky ▪  WonderQuest's ▪  Correspondents' Contributors
Humans Art, TV, music   Ask a question   Interact with nature About April
Astronomy Food   Top 10 questions   April's blog
Mathematics Oceans & climate    Forum   Newspapers with WonderQuest:
Evolution & genetics Chemistry   Answer the question     Globe and Mail
Earth Computers   Newsletter     Happy News
Technology Microcreatures   Further reading     Corrales Comment
Plants     Fast answers    
Aerospace USA Today   Teachers' science corner   Advertising

Copyright 2008 by April Holladay  

Please note: We use third-party advertising companies to serve ads when you visit our website. These companies may use information (not including your name, address, email address, or telephone number) about your visits to this and other websites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you. If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used by these companies, or to opt out, click here: Google ad and content network privacy policy